Insanity and Typepad

Constant readers will know that from time to time I allude to the dysfunctional software behind my blog host (since Day 1 in 2004) Typepad.

There are two key areas where it's irreparably broken:

1. Uploading pictures and images, which can require up to ten (10!) attempts before success, each attempt taking around 15 seconds before usually returning one of about five different error messages or simply not even being registered as received in the first place.

2. The absolute slowness of all interactions with my posting page and Typepad in general: whereas every other site I visit loads instantly, Typepad averages around 5 seconds, sometimes as long as 10 seconds. Seeing as I interact with the site probably 100 times a day in the course of preparing my three published posts, you can calculate how much dead time I spend waiting for something — or nothing — to happen. Between the tortoise-slow baseline responsiveness and the FAILed image uploading, I estimate I spend at least 15 minutes/day just staring at my screen while nothing happens.

Do the math: that's 2 hours/week = 100 hours/year of completely morale crushing nothingness.

Above and below, several of the many different error messages Typepad returns instead of uploading my photos.

We've all heard the old shibboleth "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results," frequently — and mistakenly — attributed to Albert Einstein.

Well, I'm here to tell you that that familiar saying is no longer applicable in the internet and software and coding worlds.

Why?

Because I do exactly the same thing each time I attempt to upload a photo, and then occasionally — randomly and unpredictably — what's supposed to happen happens.

I've been advised by my Crack Tech Consultant©®™ Phillip Winn that the reason the same action triggers different outcomes is that Typepad does not have sufficient servers to handle the traffic it receives and thus rejects some of it, which includes my image uploads more often than not.

As I think about the insanity quote, I realize I'm insane by its criteria.

But I think I'm quite sane, and acting logically.

I'm also far more patient than most people: I don't believe there are many people on the planet who would persist using Typepad — and certainly not continue to attempt to upload multiple photos several times a day — in the face of the constant problems it causes me.

I use the term "pathologically patient" because there has to be something seriously wrong with me to keep banging my head against this wall many times daily for all these years.

But just now I had a very happy thought: what if the various AIs I consult increasingly often (Perplexity, ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Copilot, Claude) — instead of using the comparatively primitive and archaic Google Search — can do more than find information?

How about if I can tell the AI to keep trying to upload photos until they finally appear?

And how about if I have the AI upload my posts so I don't have to sit here like a doofus waiting for the sluggish Typepad servers to register the submission?

I like it.